Introduction to linSmith

linSmith: Smith charting program for Linux

linSmith is a Smith Charting program, mainly designed for educational use. As such, there is an emphasis on capabilities that improve the 'showing the effect of'-style of operation.

Postscript output

It's main features are:

Definition of multiple load impedances (at different frequencies)
Addition of discrete (L, C, parallel and series LC, and transformer) and line components (open and closed stubs, line segments)
Connection in series and parallel
Easy experimentation with values using scrollbars
A 'virtual' component switches from impedance to admittance to help explaining (or understanding) parallel components
The chart works in real impedances (not normalized ones)
Direct view of the result on the screen
Ability to generate publication quality Postscript output
A 'log' file with textual results at each intermediate step
Load and circuit configuration is stored separately, permitting several solutions without re-defining the other (this may actually change to single files - I'm not quite convinced here)

Some distributions have made packages available for easier installation. Be aware that they may be outdated. In that case, consider compiling compiling your own, it's not really that difficult!

Thanks

This program was written with the help of the GIMP toolkit (GTK+), a marvelous piece of work, and uses the gnome-print library to generate Postscript output. Of course, it was developed on Linux, using the gcc compiler suite and the Glade GUI development system. Graphics items were designed using the GIMP itself.

I'd like to thank Georg Baum for convincing me to publish the program, and for his help with the packaging. Also thanks to Once (WanShi) Shuiqing for reporting bugs and translating into Chinese (see image).

Chinese translation

A reference to linSmith appeared in an article in High Frequency Electronics of Jan/2009 by Anthony Bichler. Thanks!

Thanks to SourceForge for the downloading and management services.

A note about Tucows

I've had some remarks about the fact that the Tucows listing is not updated regularly, and is always lagging behind.

A non-paying free software entry at Tucows normally takes 40 - 60 days to get to the top of the waiting list - more if some mistake is made at the presentation. Of course, as I don't get paid for the software, I cannot afford to pay for 'preferencial' treatment.
(Note: Updating Tucows now takes around 200 (!) days. I've given given up...)

This is also the reason for the fact that linSmith is not rated. The rating has to be paid for...

Local copies

Archivo	Tamaño	Contenido
linsmith-0.99.30.tar.gz	1.1 MB	Last published version
linsmith-0.99.31.tar.gz	1.1 MB	Development

Wish list

Things I'd like to add:

Arrows to the connecting lines and arcs
Labels to the impedances
Input of impedances as S-parameters (maybe Y-parameters too)
Optional lines through points indicating wavelengths
Export the numeric impedance list to a text file (csv?)
Export of a screen shot of the map (but not just the visible part) to an image file
Make the points moveable by dragging them on the chart (the handler is already in place)
Some kind of auto-optimization?
Automatically generate a legend of the colors used.

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